The invention relates generally to guidewires for medical procedures and more particularly to guidewires with optical sensing capabilities.
Optical coherence domain reflectometry (OCDR) is a technique developed by Youngquist et al. in 1987 (Youngquist, R. C. et al., "Optical Coherence-Domain Reflectometry: A New Optical Evaluation Technique," 1987, Optics Letters 12(3):158-160). Danielson et al. (Danielson, B. L. et al., "Guided-Wave Reflectometry with Micrometer Resolution," 1987, Applied Physics 26(14): 2836-2842) also describe an optical reflectometer which uses a scanning Michelson interferometer in conjunction with a broadband illuminating source and cross-correlation detection. OCDR was first applied to the diagnosis of biological tissue by Clivaz et al. in January 1992 (Clivaz, X. et al., "High-Resolution Reflectometry in Biological Tissues," 1992, Optics Letters 17(1):4-6). A similar technique, optical coherence tomography (OCT), has been developed and used for imaging with catheters by Swanson et al. in 1994 (Swanson, E. A. et al., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,321,501 and 5,459,570). Tearney et al. (Tearney, G. J. et al., "Scanning Single-Mode Fiber Optic Catheter-Endoscope for Optical Coherence Tomograph," 1996, Optics Letters 21(7):543-545) also describe an OCT system in which a beam is scanned in a circumferential pattern to produce an image of internal organs. U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,182 to Nathel et al. describes method and apparatus for detection of dental caries and periodontal disease using OCT. However, as OCT systems rely on mechanical scanning arms, miniaturizing them enough to operate on a guidewire would be very difficult.
Polarization effects in an OCDR system for birefringence characterization have been described by Hee et al. (Hee, M. R. et al., "Polarization-sensitive low-coherence reflectometer for birefringence characterization and ranging," J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, Vol. 9, No. 6, June 1992, 903-908) and in an OCT system by Everett et al. (Everett, M. J. et al., "Birefringence characterization of biological tissue by use of optical coherence tomography," Optics Letters, Vol. 23, No. 3, Feb. 1, 1998, 228-230).
In a prior art OCDR scanning system 10, shown in FIG. 1, light from a low coherence source 12 is input into a 2.times.2 fiber optic coupler 14, where the light is split and directed into sample arm 16 and reference arm 18. An optical fiber 20 is connected to the sample arm 16 and extends into a device 22, which scans an object 24. Reference arm 18 provides a variable optical delay. Light input into reference arm 18 is reflected back by reference mirror 26. A piezoelectric modulator 28 may be included in reference arm 18 with a fixed mirror 26, or modulator 28 may be eliminated by scanning mirror 26 in the Z-direction. The reflected reference beam from reference arm 18 and a reflected sample beam from sample arm 16 pass back through coupler 14 to detector 30 (including processing electronics), which processes the signals by techniques that are well known in the art to produce backscatter profile (or "image") on display 32.